Fourth Wall Cracked
by Trinitas
Summary: Take one part crackfic and one part metanarrative. Blend, serve and cue the banter as characters in character watch their out-of-character counterparts. Contains spoilers for 7:01, "What Now?"


**Fourth Wall Cracked**

"Oh _God_." If he has to watch much more of this, he is seriously going to be sick. "Now they're playing _board games_?"

His doppelganger spells out a sappy pun. House glares and wonders where the incompetent hacks in charge had hidden the lobotomy equipment.

"Could be worse," Chase says.

"Yeah? How exactly?" House demands. "The L-bomb is going to drop soon, and if I had a _shred_ of dignity left—"

"They could've remembered what crawling through a collapsed garage on a couple pills of ibuprofen would actually do to your leg."

"And ruin the sex marathon?" House snorts. "Sure, she's hot, but he's working on a record for bruises and pain—or he should be. And pain is _not_ one of my turn-ons." He pauses. "Kind of a shame, considering."

"Not really, or you'd never get anything done. By the way, who's looking after the baby while Cuddy fiddles and the hospital burns?"

"Not my kid," House says. "Don't ask me." He looks at the viewing plane again: it's a little like a TV, except it doesn't mute, turn off or cut to commercials. "Scene change. Finally."

Chase turns back around: he's been facing the opposite wall for the duration of the sexcapades (a glimpse of the foreplay had been enough warning), but watching his own counterpart isn't much of an improvement. "Where'd that me get the time to do all these residencies? Even with just the one year in seminary and skipping a few in school, the maths don't work against his age."

"And yet he did every surgery in the hospital for two years. Go figure," House says. "Although if he wanted to be Dean of Medicine—"

"He didn't."

"Same way he didn't want Thirteen?"

Chase grimaces. "Fair enough; I suppose I'm not entitled to any dignity, either."

"I've seen you pick up women; that's not how you do it. You actually _like_ the emotional foreplay. And domesticity and the sound of little crying things." A thought occurs to him. "Hey, you want Cuddy and her much-neglected spawn? Because I don't."

"No, thanks. I'd like a family someday, but I've lost enough lately without worrying about my personality."

"How about just the spawn? Someone needs to watch it, and you seem to be lonely."

"Maybe," Chase says after a moment. "I was thinking of getting a cat, but—"

"Excellent," House says. "Now he'll have a babysitter when she tries to saddle him with it."

"'Her,' not 'it,'" Chase corrects.

"This is why you're daddy material and I'm not." House glances at the images playing in front of him. "They haven't figured out yet this farce is doomed?"

"Either he hit his head and he's hallucinating again," Chase says, "or someone replaced his ibuprofen with psychogenic drugs. Or maybe Cuddy's hallucinating this time."

"Or fantasizing," House says. "It would account for the massively unrealistic amount of sex. I'm flattered she thinks so highly of my stamina, but—"

"No more about your sex life. I know too much for comfort already."

"Come on, I barely have one. All this drivel aside—diagnosis is my substitute for orgasm."

Chase has known him too long to be surprised. "That explains a lot, actually. Have we got our single neurosurgeon upright yet?"

"You're already standing."

"I'm not a neurosurgeon."

"Whether you took the Board exam or not—"

"Didn't do the residency, either, no matter what they say. Richardson, please?"

"He can touch his nose," House says dismissively. "For bureaucratic purposes, he's fine." Then, "Why didn't other-you ditch Cuddy's assistant? I taught him some fun illegal uses for sedatives, and I know he knows all the storage closets. Intimately."

Chase gives House a tolerant smile and lets the jab pass. "You also taught him to lie and manipulate better than that, but he was a bit off."

"At least he got to keep your brain."

"For now," Chase says darkly. "They're planning to start sending him on dates in the next few weeks."

No way will that end well.

"It was nice knowing him," House says. "This is what they got out of total disgust with speed dating? 'Ready for another relationship, bring it on?'" Without waiting for a response, he says, "Though if they'd picked up that old thing with the dominatrix, that would've had entertainment value."

Chase looks a little ill. House can't blame him: if this is what they do with a quote-unquote 'normal' relationship, he shudders to think of the disaster they'd make of kink.

"I said I'd met her; that wasn't a euphemism." Tilting his head in the direction of the image (eyes avoiding it), he says, "If he goes off to France with Cuddy, no guarantees there's still a hospital when they get back."

"As if it matters," House says. "Stepford House there is too mindless to practice medicine anyway."

"What d'you think, a month before this mess explodes?" Chase asks, and they both wince when the House in the viewing plane says 'I love you,' before the damned thing finally, blessedly fades to black.

"A month or the first time he's on his own with the kid," House says. Then, "I'm finding Wilson and liberating him from Sam's clutches. We'll go bowling. Want to come with?"

"So long as we bring back a ball to put through the viewer," Chase says, and House grins.

"My thoughts _exactly_," he says, and leads the way out.

** END.**


End file.
